A Taxi Tour of Shetland

As anyone knows who has watched the popular TV mystery series, Scotland’s Shetland Islands are isolated, windswept, lightly populated and at times achingly beautiful, not to mention a center of wool-based crafts. And ponies. And lots of sheep.

All that and a bit more is what pulled us there in late spring for a two-and-a-half day whirlwind that took in a wonderful museum, an eerily-subdued archaeological site, an afternoon on a boat visiting seals and seabirds, and finally three hours in a taxi seeing the sights but not ‘sites’ of everyday on the island Shetlanders call Mainland.

The center of Lerwick, home to 7,500 of Shetland’s 22,000 population

We weren’t looking to visit historic sites or well-developed vistas, we told our driver; we wanted a sense of the atmosphere and the ordinary of it, what we might under other conditions spend a week or weeks walking about. And we found that, for a fairly small place, there’s a lot of view, and a lot of hidden history.

And by that I mean not only the buried centuries, even millenia, of Jarlshof but also the changes of more recent times, when the essentially Scandinavian islands were mortgaged to Scotland; with Scottish rule came changes in land-owning, and with it daily occupations. When later landlords made it nearly impossible for tenant crofters to pay rents, farmers became fishermen as well, and that transition has left its mark, as has the last century.

Sometimes, it’s even difficult to guess whether a stone remnant was abandoned 10, 100 or 1,000 years ago.

In the 20th century, more and more Shetlanders left outlying areas, some islands became depopulated, and on the Mainland, more than a third of the population now lives in the one real town, Lerwick. The process was accelerated in the 1970s by Shetland’s new role as a collecting point for Scotland’s North Sea oil platforms. The tanker below is a shuttle between the platforms and the tank farm.

We traveled around Mainland on a circuitous route from Lerwick, going as far south as Sumburgh, home to the main airport and to Jarlshof and as far north as Scalloway, home to Shetland’s only ‘real’ castle.

The 20th century change in Shetland life is clear as you travel; while many of the old and de-roofed stone cottages and outbuildings emptied long ago, a large part of that is more recent. We made a stop in Fladdabister, above, on the coast only a few kilometers from Lerwick.

There’s an active farming community there still, with a population of about 30; before World War II, the population was well over 100, and had a church, a school, a shop and a smithy. Today, the area is grazed by sheep, hiked by hikers and viewed by visitors. Almost all the derelict buildings in the views were inhabited as recently as the 1950s.

Much of the ‘good bits’ have been recycled when newer homes were built; there’s remarkably little waste, especially of wood. The Shetland Islands are nearly treeless, but there are plenty of rocks—and some gentle reminders to keep it clean.

Most houses we saw on our travel were small; often they had sheds built on to them, or extended wings built as a family grew. But here and there we saw a few grander ones, though still clearly working farmhouses.

Scalloway was the ruling center of the Shetlands long before Lerwick, and it was there that Earl Patrick Stewart, an early Scottish ruler of the islands, built one of two fortified castles, and the only one to survive. Stewart was known for his arrogance and cruelty; eventually he was called back to Scotland and executed. The Scalloway Castle is said to have been built with forced labor, and to have been meant to protect Stewart from the people, not from invaders.

Certainly not as well defended today; there’s a small museum next door, and a notice on the museum’s website notes that “The castle is situated next to the museum and will be unlocked when the museum is open. At other times, the castle key can be obtained from the Scalloway Hotel in the centre of the village.”

Not dead, only resting. Seals take their break all along the shore.

As we went we were able to see traces of places that once were home to communities and now support only sheep, glimpses of today’s life, a hint of the oil business, but above all, a place that begs to be visited again, and seen in slow motion, whether on a sunny day or through an atmospheric mist.

One-Clue Mystery Note: No winner this week, but George G came close, identifying several possible sites in Shetland and the Orkneys before settling on an Orkney site. The sheep in the clue picture were in Fladdabister.